A Dream
by El loopy
Summary: At the start Jack had only a name, a body with a tag. Sandy gave him a Dream. Drabbles.
1. Formed

Formed

Alone, so bitterly alone, and invisible and lost. Jack had spent those first few nights of existence sat by a fire until it burned down to the embers, waiting for the flames to sear the cold out of his skin, because maybe then they would see him. Maybe then he would be…something. Someone. Instead of just a name, spoken like a trickle of light into his mind. Jack Frost. A name with nothing else attached. A body only, with a tag. It had been in one of these darker moments that he saw the light.

"Woah!" It escaped him before he could prevent it, having forgotten that he could make sound in a world where nobody could hear him. Golden streams wending their way through windows, cascading from the sky like molten sunlight. One slipped its way past Jack, as though curious. Confused, it circled him and moved on. Jack was, after all, not much older than a child. With curious fingers he reached out and trailed them through the stream. It tickled on his skin and a laugh bubbled up and out as warmth tingled up his arm, laughter he hadn't heard, hadn't made, since that first night. Slowly he danced his fingers through the stream, watching the play of light, feeling the shadows lift and a dream form.

It was with sleepy movements that he finally withdrew his hand and lifted his head, coming face-to-face with the Sandman himself (although Jack didn't know his name at the time). The brown eyes were soft and warm even as a frown creased the forehead. Arms folded disapprovingly as he floated directly before Jack's face. The white-haired youth grinned in a strange mixture of mischief and drowsiness, raising his hands palm up in surrender.

"Won't happen again."

The Sandman examined him a beat longer, eyes looking into his soul…no, into his dreams, and the frown cleared from his face. With a short nod he departed, the golden light with him, leaving Jack with more than just a name.


	2. Polluted

Polluted

When Jack had seen what Pitch intended to do, had watched the wickedness of that curved blade, a black perversion of Sandy's own light, being drawn back, he'd felt the cold grip of fear in his own heart. The piercing through the Sandman's back struck Jack in the chest, and as the Guardian of Dreams was consumed by darkness, a slither wrapped itself around Jack's dream as well. Fury drove him into the centre of the boiling cloud that had once been his comrade, righteous anger was the force that turned that which would consume him into an explosion of black iced fireworks.

It wasn't enough to bring Sandy back.

As the Guardians had mourned, Jack had curled into a corner, hood pulled down over his ears. He heard his own voice echo over and over "C'mon Sandy," as he flew off alone to take on the Bogey Man. Like they'd been playing a game and his team was going to win. Had he thought that if he could defeat Pitch without their help then that would make him worthy of the title Guardian? Could he then have accepted the trumpets and confetti? Accepted that this was what he was called for?

He had instead gotten Sandy killed, and the others sobbed and said words of comfort, but they'd been asleep when Jack called out those words, hadn't known it was all his idea, all his fault. The darkness around his dream grew, the tendril wrapping tighter, the pollution spreading, for there was no guardian to protect it.


	3. Ignited

Ignited

Lying on the floor of that icy ravine _(for what goes better than cold and dark) _his dream was an angry mess of boiling nightmare. Hope was broken and fragmented and fragile, like Bunny's eggs. It was Tooth's power that saved him.

The call of a voice and metal gliding over metal and he was there.

In the ice and the dark of a different time, there was another frightened child, crying out in fear, half sobbing her responses. He saved her, took her place. Descended into the black, cold void and remained there as it seeped into his skin until it was all he was. It had turned his hair white and his skin to polished marble and frost danced from the tips of his fingers _(well his staff)_, but his centre was whole and warm. Lit by laughter.

There was no ice at his centre.

Sandy's dream had come after that and wrapped around his thoughts, thawing them so he was able to think, to move, to live. Huddled on the floor now, as cold as his skin, defeated _(but not alone)_ they had begun to freeze over again. Paralysing him.

His memories ignited the Dream, bursting into beautiful golden flame, searing the cold from under his skin, from around his mind, the darkness burning away like shriveled paper, flaking into nothing. Jack understood now, why they were all needed, why there was a team, and, initiated or not, he was a part of it.

He was a Guardian and there were children to save.


End file.
